


And I'd Send You A Letter From There

by honey_wheeler



Category: My So-Called Life
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 16:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17429504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: It’s not like we’re going out or anything. It’s just letters. Letters don’t mean anything. Like, maybe they meant you were engaged or something back in the Korean War, but they don’t mean anything now.





	And I'd Send You A Letter From There

**Author's Note:**

> How to fix an old mistake.

"Dear Angela, I know in the past I've caused you pain, and I'm sorry. And I'll always be sorry until the day I die. And I hate this pen I'm holding because I should be holding you. I hate this paper I under my hand, because it isn't you. I even hate this letter because it's not the whole truth. Because the whole truth is so much more than a letter can even say. If you want to hate me, go ahead. If you want to burn this letter…do it. You can burn the whole world down. You can tell me to go to hell. I'd go. If you wanted me to. And I'd send you a letter from there. Sincerely, ~~Brian Krakow~~ Jordan Catalano"

+++

__

> _“Dear Brian,_
> 
> _I’m not really sure how to start a letter to you. I don’t think I’ve ever written you a letter before, I just hollered at you from across the street. But I guess ‘hi’ would be a good way to start, so…hi. How are you? How’s school? Do you like your roommate? Have you started classes yet?_
> 
> _We don’t start classes for another week. And I hate my roommate. All she ever talks about is her boyfriend in Minnesota and how much she misses him, but the second night we were here she let some guy who works at the Student Union sleep in her bed with her. Her boyfriend calls at like 3am and she doesn’t even hear the phone ring, so I’m the one who has to wake up and answer because he won’t stop calling until someone picks it up. She also undresses a lot right in front of me, and hi, it’s a 15 by 15 foot room, how are you supposed to know where to look when someone does that?_
> 
> _Anyway. This is weird, isn’t it? I feel like I should be able to look out my window and see you looping around the street on your bike. All I can see out my window is the dumpster for the dorm next door. It’d be nice to have someone I know here. I’m kind of jealous of Rayanne and Sharon. I still can’t believe they’re rooming together. Actually (and this sounds mean, so you’re not allowed to repeat it to anyone, Brian) I kind of still can’t believe that Rayanne got into college. I think she’s surprised too, though. She probably totally fits in at NYU with her crowd of theater people. Guess that drama club thing was some sort of life-changing event for her, huh? I don’t think I’ve had any life-changing events yet. I can’t decide if I want to have one or if I’m scared to have one._
> 
> _So okay, I should try to go to the bookstore again. The lines were out the door last time so I gave up and went and sat under a tree with a book instead. I’m hoping that’s not what I want to do all the time when I’m here, give up and sit under a tree with a book instead. Anyway._
> 
> _Write back,  
>  Angela” _

+++

It’s not like we’re going out or anything. It’s just letters. Letters don’t mean anything. Like, maybe they meant you were engaged or something back in the Korean War, but they don’t mean anything _now_.

I thought it would be different. After the letter I wrote for Jordan Catalano. After she knew that I…after she knew. When I basically spilled my guts to her. I was sure things would be different. I didn’t know if they’d be dating different or ignoring my existence for all eternity different, but they had to be different. 

Except how they weren’t. All that happened was…well, nothing. She dated more of them, other guys that weren’t Jordan Catalano, but might as well have been. I hated all of them, even the ones I didn’t mind so much. We stayed kind of half-friends. I helped her with her science homework. She pretended she didn’t know I was in love with her. I tried not to be in love with her. Sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes it did. Status quo.

She writes me letters now. I’m at MIT and she’s at Wellesley, so we’re not too far away from each other. Everyone else we know is in New York or out in California or something, so it’s just the two of us out here. So far I think she kind of hates Wellesley. At least she never has much nice to say about it in her letters. Her stationery is this pale green color, kind of like celery. There’s a border of leaves on the top and the envelopes usually match, though sometimes she just mails them in a regular white envelope. I guess she can’t always find the matching ones. Her grammar isn’t that great. Sometimes I want to get out a red pen and mark her letters up, but I make myself ignore it. I like her handwriting. It kind of rolls and loops across the page. She usually sends something every other week or so. I make myself wait a few days to mail something back, even though I write my letters right after reading hers.

MIT’s hard, even when you’re really smart. I always _thought_ I was really smart, but that’s before I got here. I’m not saying I feel stupid or anything. Well, maybe sometimes. And it’s not like I haven’t felt stupid before, but I used to feel stupid about girls and now I feel stupid about, like, string theory or whatever. It’s probably good for me. My mother always said the lack of challenge for me at high school was delaying my emotional development.

My roommate’s okay, for the most part. He’s kind of a nerd. Which I know is rich coming from me, but this guy makes me look like the coolest kid in school. He makes me look like Jordan Catalano. His name’s Mitchell and he’s from Cleveland. He found a girlfriend by our second week. She’s even nerdier than he is and she does annoying things like chew with her mouth open and leave used Kleenex on my desk. It’s not like I’d ever want to date her, so I don’t really understand why I’m jealous. My parents would probably tell me that jealousy is totally normal. Well. My mother would. Dad would tell me that it’s repressed id or something. Which is probably why I haven’t said anything about it to either of them. Anyway. I feel lame for being jealous, so I pretend I’m annoyed instead. It’s worked out pretty well so far.

I keep Angela’s first letter in the front pocket of my backpack. I considered keeping it under my pillow for, like, a nanosecond, but I decided that would be pathetic. I probably shouldn’t admit I even considered it, but I’m trying to be more honest with myself. She wrote my name twice, the B all loopy and leaning forward like my name’s getting ready to run off the page. The creases in the paper are already getting kind of soft from how many times I’ve unfolded and refolded it.

+++

__

> _”Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel like I could have not gone to high school at all, since nothing I learned there is helping me here. I mean, I learned how to ditch class really well. But it doesn’t really matter, because no one here pays attention to whether you show up for class or not. It’s like you’re supposed to be a responsible adult already, even though you only got your own checking account a month ago. It’s insane. I keep marshmallows and Hi-C in my dorm room so I don’t have to go down to the dining hall for breakfast, that’s not someone who’s an adult. Of course, in 1746 we’d have been married with two kids by now. And then we’d be dead of tuberculosis before we turned 30. I bet they had fun parties._
> 
> _Your roommate doesn’t sound that bad. Well. He doesn’t sound that good either. It’s too bad we’re not upper classmen who get their own rooms. It’d be nice to have someplace I don’t have to share with anyone, and where there’s no one to see if I sleep on top of my comforter because I keep forgetting to wash my sheets._
> 
> _Not that I do that…_
> 
> _My mom’s been writing me, like, a letter a day. She tells me what she buys at the grocery store and how she’s been trying to break in her new shoes. It’s funny how the letters don’t annoy me as much as I thought they would. She thinks Danielle misses me. She moved into my room and she’s started wearing the clothes I left there. I’m going to kill her when I’m back for Christmas.”_

+++

Whenever my mother calls, she wants to know why I’m not out at some party. She tells me it’s important not to be anti-social, that I should be interacting with my “peer group.” The worst is how she always asks me if I’ve met any girls. Like, that is _not_ a conversation I want to be having with my _mother_.

And besides, I’m a complete wash-out with the girls at school anyway. I figured it might be easier since they’d all be giant dorks like me, but so far it’s not. There’s always some guy who has a new graphing calculator, or one who spent the summer interning with NASA. There’s always someone smarter and better than me. Of course, I don’t try very hard. Sometimes it’s easier to skip the parties and just come back to my room and listen to my headphones and read all of her letters in order. And by “sometimes” I mean “all the time,” since I hate parties. People have stopped inviting me since I never go. I should probably mind that more than I do. Everyone else is out trying to get laid and I’m writing letter after letter. I think I’m doing college wrong. I think I’m doing _life_ wrong.

+++

__

> _”You know something weird? My main problem with Jordan Catalano (or I guess I should say his main problem with me) was that I wouldn’t sleep with him. I wanted it to be right. I wanted to feel respected and safe and I wanted to stick to my beliefs and not do it if I wasn’t ready. And then here I am at college and I haven’t even been here a month yet and I date this guy and he takes me back to his room and I sleep with him even though I only just met him two days ago. And I can’t tell if that means I’ve gotten stupider about sex or if I’ve gotten smarter about it._
> 
> _You’re probably the last person who wants to hear about this. Sorry._
> 
> _It’s just…do you ever feel like you’ve wasted your life making good choices? I kind of can’t figure out why I’m here instead of backpacking through Thailand or trying to become a poet. Maybe I’d be good at poetry. Maybe I’d be terrible. I can’t tell anymore.”_

+++

She’d probably be a great poet. She wrote this thing once for the Lit magazine at school about a girl living in a gingerbread house covered with mold. There were these people who were like paper dolls and they blew away when she blew them a kiss. I always liked that part, those little people cut out of paper, maybe some of them holding hands like they’d been cut all together in one big string. I always wondered if I was one of those paper people that she blew away with her kiss when she wrote that poem. I hoped I wasn’t. It was probably stupid to think I might even be in her poem at all. I was pretty much the bane of her existence back then.

I try not to think about her saving herself in the face of Jordan Catalano’s charms and then sleeping with some random guy her first month at school. It’s the kind of thing that, like, can make you want to kill yourself if you think about it too long.

+++

__

> _”Of course I remember that poem! I just can’t believe YOU remember it. I can’t believe you knew it was mine, actually. Remember Rayanne’s basement of love poem? Chersky tried to claim she wrote it once. I don’t know why she was trying to cover for Rayanne, it didn’t bother Rayanne at all. I still don’t know which one you wrote. It wasn’t that one about the fishing trip was it?_
> 
> _I don’t know who the paper people were, actually. But you weren’t one. I think you might have been the mold. No offense.”_

+++

Mine was terrible. I knew it was terrible when I was writing it. I pretty much hated Mr. Racine, so I didn’t even try. Actually, that’s not true. I tried very hard to write the sort of “banal crap” that I knew he’d hate the most. I think it was called, “The Song of the Sparrow.” I don’t even know if sparrows sing, so that should give you an idea of how good it was.

Sometimes high school seems like a nightmare I can’t forget. It makes no sense that I miss it sometimes too. Why would anyone miss something that made them so miserable all the time?

Every time I answer her letters, I convince myself not to ask her to visit. I’ve looked at the bus schedules from Wellesley, like, fifty times. I even picked one up once, thinking I might just mail it to her and let her figure it out, but I didn’t. I’m trying not to want too much from her. I figure that way I won’t be so disappointed when I don’t get anything.

+++

__

> _”You’re the only person who still writes. The last mail I got from anyone else was a Statue of Liberty postcard from Sharon and Rayanne that just said “Wish you were here.” The funny thing is, a month ago I would have killed to be there. Now I’m just kind of over it. Do you think that’s a good sign? Or am I just giving up?_
> 
> _So I’ve been thinking about coming for a visit. I mean, I’ve never been to Boston before. And I have a three day weekend coming up, so it could be fun. But I don’t want to put you out or anything, I won’t come if you don’t want me to. Just tell me if you don’t want me to come and I’ll hang around here.”_

+++

It’s her idea to stay in my room. I’d arranged for her to stay with one of the girls down the hall, but she says there’s no reason to bother Melissa, really, she can just sleep here. And she’s the one who tells me not to be silly when I start to spread blankets on the floor for myself, saying that the bed’s big enough to share. I’d wanted to suggest all of that myself, but I’m still kind of a chicken. Plus I want her to think I’m a gentleman or something. But they’re all her ideas, so I’m probably okay.

“Remember that conversation we had?” I want to ask as we awkwardly get ready for bed. “We were sitting on your staircase and you had on that skirt I always hated and you said that girls thought about sex too and I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I replayed that conversation, like, a million times in my head and wanted to ask you what exactly you thought about and how often and who. And I still want to ask, I want to ask if you’re thinking about sex right now and if you’re freaked out like I am or, like, over it already.” 

I don’t say any of that, though. Instead I say, “Your feet are like ice,” when she slides in next to me and her feet press against my calves where my pajama pants have gotten hiked up.

“Sorry!” she says. “Sorry, I’ll move them.” But I tell her it’s okay, that I don’t mind, and I lie awake for a long time trying to figure out exactly what she smells like. Every time she shifts or rolls over (which is often), a wave of it hits my nose. It isn’t until I wake up that I figure out it smells like mangos. I guess it’s her soap or her lotion or something. I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone, like, exuding the scent of mangos. It’s nice.

At breakfast, I tell her the campus legend about someone finding a dead parakeet in the do-it-yourself waffle batter and she laughs and hits my arm and says there’s no way that’s true. That’s nice too.

When she leaves, she kisses me on the cheek and gives me a hug. The old Brian would have replayed it in his mind a thousand times. He would have thought of the dry, soft touch of her lips in the shower when his hand strayed down, he would have rested his forehead against the cool tile and felt his pulse pound with the rhythm of his hand.

Turns out the new Brian is exactly like the old Brian when it comes to that sort of thing.

+++

__

> _”I had fun on my visit too. Maybe I can come back soon? We never did get into the city and I’d love to see all the Revolutionary War stuff and the churches and everything. And it was just nice being there. Funny how being with you is familiar and new at the same time now. Like we’re different versions of ourselves. Like we’re newer and better and we won’t make all the same mistakes we did when we were our old selves. Like we won’t screw everything up anymore._
> 
> _I kind of miss you. Just so you know.”_

+++

We don’t see any Revolutionary War stuff when she comes back, or any churches, or anything outside my dorm room at all. It’s her own fault. She’s the one who kisses me as soon as we get back to my room from the bus station, almost before I’ve dropped her bag on the floor. Like she’s been thinking about doing it since she got here. Like she’s been thinking about doing it since she left the last time. The way I have been.

It’s better than I imagined it would be, kissing Angela Chase. And I imagined it a lot of times and a lot of different ways. But none of them were ever as good as this, as _real_ as this. I could almost forget all those other imaginary kisses because this one will always be enough. Even if it’s the last.

Luckily it’s not the last.

+++

__

> _”Brian, how come you never hated me? I gave you so many reasons to hate me, but somehow but you never did.”_

+++

I write, “because I loved you,” twenty times on a piece of paper before I burn it with Mitchell’s lighter and tuck her letter into my copy of _A Separate Peace_ to answer later when I think I’m ready to tell her. 


End file.
